About

HUQUQ, which means rights, is rooted in the idea that human beings, especially members of vulnerable social groups must have recourse to address and prevent the transgressions of those with power over them, regardless of the authority of such a power or lack thereof. This idea is not new or a modern discovery.


Throughout history, human societies have established norms to deal with the imbalance of social power, some more successfully than others. What is unique in the modern era, however, is the emergence of the legal entity called the State, with a legal monopoly on the use of force and violence. The power differential between nation-states further universalized the consequences of State power. These social and political transformations made it more urgent to protect individuals and vulnerable social groups from the transgressions of the State and the aggression of more powerful nation-states against  less powerful ones. Efforts in this regard produced the modern notion of human rights, which refers to sets of expectations requiring the State to do certain things for and not do certain things to people under its control.

This framing of the idea of rights presents Huquq as an area of concern, inquiry, and action at the same time.

§  Huquq is an area of concern because it is about deprivation. Certain social groups are denied certain things because they lacked the power and/or the means to access them.

§  Huquq is an area of inquiry because understanding the forces, pretexts, and consequences of deprivation require the production of knowledge, the dissemination of information, the acquisition of skills, the training of teachers and mentors.

§  Huquq is an area of action because abuses that had happened and/or will happen in the future must be remediated and mitigated through formal systemic action, by creating the needed institutional, formal instruments, and through collective, informal action. The latter aims to enculture values and norms that change societal attitudes and behavior that tolerate and/or reproduce the conditions that promote abuse, discrimination, bigotry, supremacy, and racism--the impulse that result in human rights abuses.

HUQUQ.com, informed by these insights and perspectives, aims to provide researchers, activists, teachers, students, and the public with resources that integrate research, learning, and action from a plurality of perspectives, sources, and authorities in service of vulnerable individuals and social groups. It is not about empowerment, because empowerment values power.

HUQUQ.com chronicles past atrocities so that future ones do not take place; and when they take place, they are addressed during the lifetime of the subjects and objects of such atrocities, not hundreds of years later.


HUQUQ is about challenging the value systems that reproduce poverty and causes the degradation of human and natural beings and the destruction of the precious environment that sustain all living beings.


Meet the founding Researcher-in-Residence and Project Director, volunteers, contributors; collaborators...

Meet the Team (for their safety, some volunteers and collaborators may not be listed in the public space; email us directly if you wish to contact a member directly).

 

 

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